Most Wi-Fi infrastructure vendors advertise cell design recommendations for configuring access points (APs) at a site. For example, the vendor may recommend placing the cell edge at −67 dBm, which is a way to describe that, at a location where a signal transmitted by a first AP as measured by a site survey device reaches −67 dBm, the survey device should also measure a signal transmitted by a second AP at about that same value. Any movement of the site survey device towards either the first or second AP would increase the received signal strength, thereby providing a strong signal when a client device decides to roam.
However, the signal measurements captured by the site survey device is only valid at a given point in time and space. Once the cell is deployed, client devices (also referred to herein as simply “clients”) with different receive and transmit thresholds may not read the same signal value from the APs at the same physical point. Additionally, the transmission power of the APs may change dynamically as part of a radio resource management scheme. Further, radio frequency (RF) conditions change at the micro level (e.g., at the clients), but can also change at macro level (e.g. the movement of people or physical objects change). As a result, the cell boundaries designed at survey time when initially configuring the APs may not offer the optimal cell edge during the lifetime of the network, and may not offer the same edge position for different types of clients. This is a major issue for administrators, who typically have no visibility into the experience of different types of clients, as well as changes made to the physical layouts of the site.
To facilitate understanding, identical reference numerals have been used, where possible, to designate identical elements that are common to the figures. It is contemplated that elements disclosed in one embodiment may be beneficially utilized on other embodiments without specific recitation.